This article focusses on Alessandro Manzoni's interest for the French Catholic authors of the late 17th century (Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Nicole, and Pascal). Some of these writers were Jansenists. The long debate on whether Manzoni was influenced by Jansenism or not has been weakened by the different, sometimes opposite, and often inappropriate definitions of Jansenism that some scholars gave, and other took for granted. This article re-examines these definitions closely. It concludes that Jansenism, as a set of doctrinal and political ideas, did not play a significant role in Manzoni. Jansenism as a word, moreover, became a misleading abstraction in Manzonian studies, and should be avoided when possible.

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